Ann Oakley: Connecting private lives and public work

Author and academic Ann Oakley discusses gender, patriarchy, methodology, and the politics of memory and identity at the Bristol Festival of ideas event held at Foyles bookshop in November.

Ann talks frankly and openly about the experience of being the daughter of Richard Titmuss, policy analyst and defender of the welfare state, and how growing up in what she refers to as ‘the blue plaque house’ in London shaped her own personal, political and academic development.

In conversation with Sarah LeFanu, Ann shares stories about discovering and developing her feminism amid the act of dusting her father’s bookshelves as well as her delight in burrowing into deep and darksome archives where she uncovered papers that had not previously been seen to find ‘the shadowy spaces behind and between the official texts.’ Her enthusiasm for the way the private and public interact in the making of people is heartfelt and contagious. Listen to Ann speak below:

Much of the discussion is based around material recently published by Ann in her latest book Father and Daughter, in which she mixes biography, autobiography, intellectual history, archives, and personal interviews to provide a compelling narrative that analysis defies the usual social science publications to offer a truly distinctive account. Copies are available at the Policy Press website at a 20% discount.